A new political party has entered the fray as an alternative to Democrats and Republicans ahead of the 2012 elections. On Monday, former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson announced he will run for president with the newly formed Justice Party. Although hailing from a solidly red state, Anderson has been known as one of the most progressive mayors of any major U.S. city in recent years. During his two mayoral terms from 2000 to 2008, Anderson...

The Occupy Wall Street movement moved from the streets to the docks on Monday with a series of actions along the West Coast, including San Diego, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, San Diego, Portland, Tacoma, Longview, Seattle, Bellingham, Anchorage and Vancouver. Many actions led to confrontations with police, resulting in scores of arrests, and in some cases, the use of pepper spray and flash grenades on demonstrators. Several ports were...

In an exclusive interview, we speak with former Greek prime minister, George Papandreou, who is attending the U.N. climate change summit in Durban, South Africa. Papandreou was forced to resign last month when he suggested holding a national referendum to allow the Greek people to have a say in whether they would accept the European Union’s bailout plan which would necessitate severe austerity cuts. We speak to Papandreou about the...

European leaders are preparing to unveil their plans for addressing the sovereign debt crisis that’s threatened to tear apart the eurozone. Both France and Germany are expected to push for changes to the eurozone treaty, including centralized oversight of national budgets and tighter reins on debt. In a speech on Thursday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said radical changes are needed in order to save the euro. Sarkozy’s address...

In Britain, up to two million workers have marched in the streets during the largest mass protest in generations. Teachers, hospital staff, garbage collectors, firefighters and border guards are participating in a 24-hour strike organized by a coalition of 30 trade unions. About a thousand demonstrations and rallies are being held across the country. Public sector workers say proposed pension "reforms" will force them pay more and...

Some 1,000 police officers raided the Occupy Los Angeles encampment in a park outside City Hall overnight, arresting scores of people and evicting what has been the largest Occupy camp in the country. Meanwhile, Occupy Philadelphia protesters vacated their encampment this morning after more than a thousand police moved in and warned them of mass arrests. We get eyewitness updates on both raids from National Lawyers Guild legal observer Ken...

How does the Occupy Wall Street movement move from "the outrage phase" to the "hope phase," and imagine a new economic model? In a Democracy Now! special broadcast, we bring you excerpts from a recent event that examined this question and much more. "Occupy Everywhere: On the New Politics and Possibilities of the Movement Against Corporate Power," a panel discussion hosted by The Nation magazine and The New School...

American "vulture" investors, including a top funder of the Republican Party, have demanded that African nations pay over half a billion dollars for old debts, for which the investors paid only a few million. One New York vulture speculator, Peter Grossman of FG Capital Management, is demanding $100 million from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Is he collecting a legitimate debt from the Congo, or is the vulture’s claim based...

The bipartisan so-called "supercommittee" has failed to reach an agreement on reducing the federal deficit after three months of negotiations over taxes and spending. The full Congress will now have a little over a year to come up with an alternative. A trigger of $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts over 10 years to military and domestic programs takes effect in 2013. "What people need to remember is that we are a rich...

A video that spread rapidly online shows University of California, Davis, campus police officers pepper-spraying student protesters at close range on Friday at point-blank range as they sat together to protest the dismantling of the "Occupy UC Davis" encampment. The two officers involved in the incident were placed on administrative leave, and the incident has sparked calls for the resignation of UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi, who...